


Of Oak and Stone

by English_Tea_Roses



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Cute, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Fluff, Ghosts, Necromancy, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 22:32:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5558039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/English_Tea_Roses/pseuds/English_Tea_Roses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When an injured, kindly woodsman named Feuilly is taken in by Cosette, a princess living in exile, he learns that he must join up with her and the other resistance fighters to save the kingdom from dark King Theodule's nefarious rule. However, King Theodule has a supernatural advantage on his side: the enslaved ghosts of the old King Gillenormand and Prince Marius who are forced to do his evil bidding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Oak and Stone

“Halt in the name of the king!” the voice behind Feuilly shouted as the hoof beats pounded after him. Feuilly swore under his breath as he panted and swerved behind the familiar trees, the squad of knights in hot pursuit. What had he done? This was not the King’s private woods and Feuilly had only been cutting down the good trees the way he and his father before him and his grandfather before _him_ always had. The oak he had been chopping through had been thick and tough; he had only paused a moment to slake his thirst when four men in iron bolted out of the forest and demanded that he show his papers. Papers? Feuilly had never heard of any such thing, so he panicked and ran before they could separate his body from his dark head.

The drop-off was so close, so close he could almost taste it. Horses, goats, men, nobody could get down the steep hillside without serious injury or death. Feuilly prayed to the gods that luck would be on his side that day, as the drop-off was the only place the horsemen couldn’t follow him. The smell of the pine trees at the bottom as he drew closer only served to remind him how very, very painful this was ought to be. He was running, running, until suddenly the ground disappeared beneath his feet as he was falling. Feuilly’s moment of sheer terror quickly faded as he crashed through the pine trees, being stuck everywhere on his body and landing very hard on his ribs and left leg as he tumbled down the slope. He felt something, several somethings, crack; he screamed in pure pain as he hit the needle covered floor and blacked out.

The first time he woke, an angel surrounded by warm light was dabbing his forehead, her golden hair framing her delicately beautiful face. The pressure on his ribs was new and tight with supports, making it difficult to draw more than a half-lung’s worth of air with each inhalation. He was somewhere indoors, he could tell that much, but the pain, oh the pain, was so terrible that he was soon drifting onto the blessed shores of sleep again.

The second time, the angel was nowhere to be seen. The fire had gone cold, and the little room was filled with daylight. Feuilly found the strength to turn his head and noted the bunches of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling above a scrubbed wooden table. Under his hands outside the bed, he felt the raised patterns of a patchwork quilt. This under-forest was as foreign to him as the moon, none of the smells or sounds giving him a hint as to where he was besides the ever-present scent of pine. His left leg burned like a forge; it, too, was braced with branches and wrapped tightly with what felt like tree bark. He was so weak that the darkness overwhelmed him again, sending him swirling into the abyss.

The third time, he was able to sit up, wincing in pain in his chest. The angel was sitting at the table, across from her a dark-haired woman wrapped in leather and furs; they looked over to him as he blinked in the flickering firelight.

“Ah, you’re awake at last,” the angel said, her voice tired but gentle.

“W-where am I? Who are you?” Feuilly asked, his voice husky from lack of water. The dark-haired woman rose, took a pewter bottle from the shelf, and helped him drink a mixture of water and some bittersweet herb. He cleared his throat, sending a jab of pain coursing through his body.

“My name is Cosette,” the angel said, “And this is Eponine. We found you half-dead in the woods almost an entire moon ago and brought you here. How do you feel?” A moon? He shouldn’t have lived, not by any means he knew. The knights would have reported him dead; he was safe, for now.

“Not half-bad, miss,” Feuilly said, “Ribs hurt like hell, but I’ll survive. Begging your pardon, how am I alive? Not that I’m not grateful, but that landing might’ve killed me. Feuilly, by the way.” Eponine gave a curt bow to him.

“It was my doing. A thousand years of healing in my family don’t go away at the sight of a little cracked rib or two, do they? It’s all in the herbs and stones, woodsman.” A forest witch? He’d never met a young one before, the craft having been viciously outlawed by the new king. Any person found practicing magic was immediately arrested or executed on sight by the Red Knights, the king’s army of secret police. The old village witches had stopped practicing spellwork, stopped passing it down to their daughters, save for one, apparently. This witch couldn’t have been more than perhaps twenty.

“Thank you, both of you,” Feuilly said, trying to sound strong, “For letting me live. I’ll be up and out of your hair in no time at all.” Eponine and Cosette snorted in unison.

“Good luck with that, Feuilly,” Cosette said, “No amount of magic is going to fix the damage done by a moon’s lack of proper food. Even if your leg was healed, you wouldn’t be going anywhere without support for at least another moon.”

“Like a newborn babe,” Eponine said. Feuilly lifted his covers with considerable effort and took note of his malnourished frame. His stomach was uncommonly acquainted with his backbone, leaving skin barely covering his body where thick muscle had once been. He sighed and accepted that he was fated to stay. Besides, it wasn’t as if the trees were going anywhere. He spotted his ax leaning against the far side of the cabin, which he was most fortunate to not have landed on in the fall. Eponine bid them goodbye and exited the cabin into the night, claiming important business awaited her at Tower Marble, a night’s journey away. Feuilly pitied the man who might try to attack her on her way to the fortress.

“Care for some soup?” Cosette asked. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He needed to think, and to think he needed food, so he nodded and accepted his meal. As he ate, he felt his sharp mind clear and strangely, remembered one of the stories the villagers told, the whispers that Princess Euphrasie had run deep into the forest and never come back out again two years earlier. He had dismissed it as preposterous at the time, but then again, he had thought the witches had all left the realm.  

“So, Miss Cosette,” Feuilly started carefully, “how did someone so lovely end up in this dark corner of the forest? I can’t recall seeing you in any of the villages within a hundred miles from here.” He studied her reactions, and she studied him right back.

“Who are you, Feuilly?” Cosette asked him, “Who are you, really? Men do not simply end up here, who sent you to question me?” Ah, he had his answer.

“A woodsman, nothing more, nothing less, _Princess Euphrasie_ ,” he answered. She flinched at the name and turned from him so he couldn’t see her face.

“That name is dead to me. I am Cosette, princess of nothing but this cabin and if you’re an intelligent man, you’ll tell no one I am here. No one, you understand?”

“But prin- Cosette, why do you hide? The king searches for you every day and I wouldn’t turn down a castle and riches,” Feuilly said. Cosette laughed bitterly.

“Does he, now? What has he told the common folk? That he tried his hardest to save his dear grandfather and cousin, but the adder’s venom was too strong for them? That I spurned his advances when I ran?” she demanded.

“Our king, gods save him, did so, miss. Witches sent the adders, he says, so now he rounds ‘em up and throws them in the keep. Lots of people, witch or not, being thrown in the keep, it seems, these days,” Feuilly said. Cosette whipped around her eyes and hair blazing with the fury of the flame behind him.

“He lies!” she shouted, “He coated his dagger with the venom and made me watch as he killed King Gillenormand and my dear Marius, before locking me in my room and claiming he’d be in for me the next morning. Naturally, I tied together my bedsheets and climbed out my window.

They chased me for miles, so long that I thought I was going to die from running. I hadn’t been in the forest since I was a little girl wandering alone. It was dark and I was still in shock from Theodule’s betrayal. The hill was a godsend; there was a rope to climb down in those days, which I cut behind me. I staggered around the under-forest for days, completely lost, until Eponine found me and brought me to her cabin.”

“Why does the king hate magic?” Feuilly asked her at the end of her daring tale. She sat on the edge of his bed and took a deep breath.

“What I’m going to say will make you think me mad,” she said, “and I wouldn’t believe it had I not seen it with my own eyes. The king hates magic, because he wants to be the sole owner of it.”

“I don’t-“ Feuilly started, but she cut him off.

“Somehow, he has mastered the evil art of necromancy. According to my fellow refugees from his wrath, whom you’ll meet on the morrow, the king has enslaved the spirits of Marius and Gillenormand and uses them to spread terror and slaughter entire villages who oppose his iron will. I saw him steal their thumb bones and enchant them. The people of the forest, whom he knows do not have his King’s Papers, are likely to be his next target and we must stop him,” Cosette said. We? He was a woodsman, never a rebel. But the thought of the children of the forest burning was impossible to ignore.

“Let me join you, I want to help my people,” Feuilly stated. Cosette studied his face again, looking for signs of dishonesty.

“We’ll see. But first, you must heal and rest. Tomorrow, you will meet the resistance.”

She took another cloth from the shelf and poured a violet liquid over it. She put the cold object on Feuilly’s forehead, sending him within minutes into a painless, dreamless sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, niche side of the Les Mis fandom! I hope you've enjoyed this little story thus far. It will be around three chapters, perhaps up to five if things get tricky with the plot. I should probably warn you: since this is a fairy tale setting, there will be no sex taking place as I want this to reflect in the Disney-style, not the old Grimm-style. I'm sure you understand that I'd like to keep this fairly lighthearted.
> 
> -The Reclusive Author


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